Hi! I'm Traumador The Tyrannosaur

"I may only have a brain the size of a peanut... wait what was I saying again?"

Welcome to My Life

Rather than bore you with a long life story, I thought I'd share some of the memorablia I've collected from my many adventures.

As I'm really big on geology, I thought I'd set up my memory board as a rough Timeline of my existence.

Please forgive the lack of proper scale. They only make corkboards so big...

If you are interested in any of the items or topics on my board just click on their picture and check out any related posts (some are still under construction at moment...).

Like all (good?) stories mine has a beginning. Only unlike most others that claim it, my story really does start a LONG time ago!

When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth!!!

It was back at the hey day of my kind that I originate from. 65 million years ago during the Cretaceous period, to be precise.

I was born...

Now I can't tell you details about it, for obvious reasons, but my egg was lain in prehistoric Alberta.

Something REALLY bad happened!!!

Then a few weeks or months after my egg was laid, the Dinosaurs went extinct...

I didn't notice

Yet somehow I survived, after a fasion. My egg was buried, but despite all logic this did NOT kill me. Rather put me into a slumber through the ages (and pre-ages!). Millions and millions of years. You know come to think of it, I was really bored!!!

I was discovered

Despite all the odds against it, when I was finally uncovered my egg hatched, and I found myself a Dinosaur in the modern world...

The Explorer

My discoverer was a tour guide named Craig who fashioned himself a palaeontologist. However up until the day he found me, his ambition hadn't gone so well. I wonder if he wishes his luck hadn't changed after finding me?

Being a Dinosaur in the modern era, I didn't growup like any other Dinosaur before me...

I was raised by humans

Craig took me into his home, and as of such i grewup to think more like a mammal most of the time, and not a tyrannosaur...

My First Roommate

Dan also lived in our house, and unlike Craig, he often didn't like the problems and mischief i'd get into

My Mom

i would encounter my mother, after a fashion, only she'd been long dead. only her skeleton remains today, but i guess it's better than nothing.

My Play Mates

When I finally met and made friends with some other Dinosaurs, I of course picked the oddest Dinosaurs a T-Rex could hang out with!

Sadly I couldn't just sit around the house eating and playing video games forever... I eventually entered the work force. The number of jobs avaliable to a Dinosaur are pretty limited though...

I ended up at the local museum

Fortunately my hometown is home to one of the best Palaeontology museums in the world! So I got a job there...

I learned all thing Palaeontology

Naturally while at the Tyrrell I picked up some scientific know how and skills!

The girl of my dreams...

I fell in love with the museum's star attraction, Lillian the Albertosaur... Not that she returned the feelings back in those days!

Till I was fired...

The museum had too many Dinosaurs wanting to work there. So due to me being me, I was one of the ones let go...

The Tyrrell was a huge part of who I was early in my life. Without it I needed a new direction...

There were too many other Dinosaurs...

Unfortunately Drumheller was just overrun with other Dinosaurs. So I wasn't going to be able to stay there, and make a name for myself.

So I tried to find my own space...

I travelled across BC thinking I was travelling back in time. Only later would I find out BC in Canada stands for British Columbia!

I needed help...

Larry the Tyrannosaur

I moved!

To New Zealand

I'm a big deal to the Government!

I work at a museum...

My (almost) secret origin!

Nearly a hundred years ago, the mysterious fossil hunter Francis Slate nearly uncovered my egg. For some reason he left me there in badlands. forced wait for someone else to uncover me...

i now had a "team"... well 2 other people, tony and yumi, but that could be considered a team after a fashion (just not a very big one)... both of whom were going to help me track down mr. slate and his past operations.

with more people in gathered to the cause, all we had to do now was go to a suitable location to apply ourselves. as i had reasonable evidence that a lot of mr. slate's exploits (in the drumheller region anyway) were based around some of the 20+ coal mines operating in the area at the time, we would need to focus our efforts around these former mine sites.

this name might sound familiar, and if you read my blog a lot you'd be right. midland has come up before, as the tyrrell museum is situated in this park. however we weren't going to be looking around the museum as (i already had, and) it marked the outer west boundary of the park, and wasn't what the park was established for originally.

midland provincal park had been setup in the beginning to perserve the site and artifacts of the old midland coal mine.

we wanted look around this old mine, so we needed to search the park's interior (as opposed to the fringe of the mine's propery that is around the tyrrell).

within minutes of wandering the park we encountered plenty of evidence of the once bustling mining activity. there were 4 old mining carts in our first search area, this one here being the most intact of the lot.

it was cool to think that this had once been used to bring loads of coal out of the hills around us, and back out to the surface for the first time in 72 million years!

it became pretty clear why they'd been mining this area. though there were many excellent fossil bearing layers of sandstone and mudstone, there were 3 thick huge coal seams running between the fossil layers!

then as i walked around a bend my heart nearly stopped. on the hill in front of me was a bunch of junk!

why was i so excited by old timbers and random debris? because one man's garbage can be a tyrannosaur's treasure...

turning around to excitedly call over tony and yumi, i realized the few scraps i saw on the hillside were just the tip of the... uh coal-berg. scattered all around me were yet more remenants and left overs of the coal mine's operations... definately not stuff left behind by francis slate.

`

i saddened a little bit. it made sense that a coal mine which operated for over two decades, and whose purpose was to tear apart the landscape around me, would leave a lot more evidence of its existence than a single palaeontologist passing through here for a couple days...

`

this presented me with a new problem (and no doubt one of the reasons slate had remained elusive for all these years). if i was going to find slate around these mines, i couldn't count on over half the means that darren tanke uses to find lost quarrys. (which is probably why he seldom bothers looking for lost quarrys around drumheller. the mines cause a lot of artifact pollution!)`fortunately i wasn't looking for unknown mystery quarrys. i had photographs of slate working this area. meaning i had one sure fire way of pin pointing where he was working. i'd have to find the actually spot of the dig sites and make sure i was watching the landscape around me carefully to not miss them!

midland ended up a bust, but not to worry. tony already had another site in mind for tomorrow...